


In the Interest of Honesty

by Monocytogenes



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:05:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monocytogenes/pseuds/Monocytogenes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why fear?"</p>
<p>Crane has a conversation with a psychiatrist about his favorite subject.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Interest of Honesty

“Why fear?”

There is a shift at that, barely perceptible; a slight loosening of Crane’s straight posture, a mild lifting of his chin. If not for his eerie, unyielding calm over the past thirty minutes, Leland may have missed it altogether. As things stand, she’s able to register it as interest, even in the seconds before Crane’s thin lips birth a smile.

“That is an excellent question, Joan.”

She watches him, not bothering to object to the use of her first name. He watches her and the shared gaze, the cold connection doesn’t falter as he draws away from the plastic back of the chair, leaning forward by inches.

“Fear is the most primitive and influential of emotions. It is ‘the great inhibitor of action,’ the primary manifestation of the survival instinct—something above love, above compassion, above reasonable thought. Its hand strips away all pretenses, smashes all higher motives, reduces people to the bare bones of what they are. The exploration of fear provides the ultimate insight into the unsightly truths of the human psyche.”

He pulls closer, smile fluid and earnest, pupils too dilated in the sickly glow of the fluorescents. From the corner of her eye, she can see his knuckles going white, fingers tightening against his knees.

“I enjoy looking upon people as they truly are, devoid of affectations and defenses. I revel in the realities of raw feeling and primal instinct. Fear is the sharp-edged mirror that best draws those realities out for the world to see.”

He slides closer still, to the very edge of his seat. She is riveted, paralyzed by the awakening of his features, the awful hunger quite apart from academic curiosity, easing snakelike into his languid tone.

“I have done with my toxin what a thousand psychotherapy sessions cannot possibly achieve—I have beheld, from a position of absolute power, the honest core of humanity.”

He drops his voice to something low and tender, his breath warm and mouth near enough to kiss.

“Allow me one indulgence, in the interest of honesty. Tell me, Joan—what _are_ you afraid of?”

It takes all her strength not to breathe his name.

**Author's Note:**

> The phrase Crane quotes is attributed to the psychologist William McDougall in White and Watt's _The Abnormal Personality,_ 5th ed. In full it goes:  
>  "[Fear] haunts the mind; it comes back alike in dreams and waking life, bringing with it vivid memories of the terrifying impression. It is thus the great inhibitor of action, both present action and future action, and becomes in primitive societies the great agent of social discipline through which men are led to the habit of control of the egoistic impulses."


End file.
